Things i really don’t love about it: the noise, oh my god, there are speakers on street corners (every corner of the big zebra crossings) blaring i don’t know what public information or radio station or something; the high pitched street vendors’ calls which go up at the end in a squeaky question and are given endless identical repetitions; the deranged glockenspiel player who has recorded the entire Beatles back catalogue as a lovely series of jingles to be played on train stations while we are waiting, or at which the train is about to arrive if we are already on it. The roads looping all over the place, often high up on flyovers going past someone’s bedroom window – Spaghetti Junction doesn’t begin to cover it, it’s mayhem, and yet incredibly orderly, with endless officials waving flashing batons and controlling it all. The concrete – hardly a tree in sight, except for a few parks here and there – like Docklands on steroids – because the city is so new, having been earthquaked badly in 1922 and then firebombed to the ground in WW2. Not much of it left, even the shrines are re-builds, but there is an occasional real ‘old’ house now and then. it explains why Kyoto and areas outside Tokyo are so valued, becuase there is virtually nothing old here and it may become the next Venice, sinking beneath the weight of its own concrete.